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Wednesday, April 20, 2016

above: Scott Morrison will likely bring down an Austerity Federal Budget in May ; But he is taking a harder line on Superannuation Concessions than Labor. Labor needs to 'up the Ante' on Superannuation Concessions to maintain as much credibility as it can on Distributive Justice.

Dear
readers;

The following letters have been written over the past month ; Most have not
been published (except here).But I hope
that here (at my blogs) they will promote reflection and debate.This time we’re looking at the following:

·Superannuation
Concessions

·liberal rights
and the trashing of Cori Bernadi’s Office

·Labor and
Negative Gearing

·Life Expectancy
for the Mentally Ill

·Aged Care

·The Threat
of Austerity in the Upcoming Morrison Federal Budget.

Dr Tristan
Ewins

Labor needs to up the ante on
Superannuation Concessions

Turnbull’s tougher
stance on Superannuation Concessions raises the prospect of it ‘outflanking’
Labor on one front pertaining to distributive justice.The tax concessions threshold stands to be
cut back from incomes of under $300,000/year to those under $180,000/year – compared with Labor’s
current target of under $250,000/year. (‘The Age’, 20/4)Malcolm Turnbull has wasted much of the
‘small l liberal kudos’ and political capital he had won after deposing Tony
Abbott.To win the Federal Election,
Bill Shorten and Labor cannot afford for him to ‘claw it back’.As a minimum Shorten must now match
Turnbull’s policy.Even better: he must
outbid Turnbull on distributive justice ; and the related theme of Budget
repair without Austerity. Indeed Labor should welcome the opportunity for a degree
of bipartisanship on an issue where its ‘distributive justice instincts’ were
already demanding a stronger policy. Richard Denniss of The Australia Institute
has projected that Superannuation Concessions will soon cost taxpayers$50 billion every year : mainly in the form
of an effective subsidy for the unambiguously well-off.(paid by the rest of us)A responsible policy would aim to cut this
expense by half as a minimum; targeting the well-off specifically; and done as
soon as is humanly possible.

Andrew Bolt was wrong on liberal
rights re: trashing of Cori Bernadi’s Office
Andrew Bolt (Herald-Sun, 21/3) condemns
“leftists” and “socialists” for the trashing of Liberal MP Cory Bernadi’s
office.And indeed the tactics of those
people were questionable at best.In a
picket line there is a clear physical objective – which can interfere with the
profits of a private business – and thus deliver leverage to workers over wages
and conditions.Similarly boycotts of
the goods of a country or a specific company can achieve leverage in a
comparable way.But the protestors
against Bernadi achieved no leverage over government policy through their
actions. And while Andrew Bolt often
agitates for free speech, he appears to have nothing to say about Mike Baird’s
repressive anti-protest laws.The
problem with mistaken protest strategies can be that they play into the hands
of the illiberal forces (ironically in the Liberal Party) who are now
threatening our civil liberties.A truly
liberal and democratic society not only supports free speech – but also defends
the right to protest, and even the right to engage in civil disobedience. Those
rights are now under threat – and whereas Bernadi abhors ‘Leftist
totalitarians’ the real threat to our rights comes from within his own party.

Negative Gearing Changes Just the First
Step in Restoring the Australian Dream

Labor MP
Andrew Leigh(21/3) rightly argued that increasing supply is the
key to making housing affordable for more Australians.Labor’s anti-Negative Gearing policies should
encourage a shift to building new properties – hence helping to facilitate that
crucial objective. But if we really want to increase supply we need to look at
many billions invested in non-clustered public and social housing.To provide for those people thus enabled to
enter the housing market we also need to invest in the amenities and
infrastructure provided in emerging suburbs. Young families need transport and
communications infrastructure, hospitals and schools, parks and gardens – to
achieve the living standards they need and deserve.But this is only possible via a significant
public investment .That goes against
the grain of the Turnbull Government’s emphasis on cutting expenditure – which
sabotages the Commonwealth’s revenue base - and hence its ability to provide
for these things.Company Tax cuts
(read: corporate welfare)are the last
thing this country needs to provide for skills, infrastructure, social capital
– all necessary for a successful economy and society.

Neglect of the Mentally Ill “A kind
of Creeping euthanasia”; a Response to ‘The Age’

Catherine
Armitage of ‘The Age’(‘A kind of creeping euthanasia’, 11/4/16) is to be commended on her article exposing the
rate at which mentally-ill Australians are dying well before their time.That is, that the mentally ill (almost half a
million Australians with a serious mental illness)are on average dying 30 per cent earlier than
other Australians – not just because of suicide, but mainly because of
preventable physical illness. That is,
9000 Australians dying as a consequence every year. This far outstrips the road toll and
suicide rate combined several times over. With the Federal
Election now looming it is to be hoped that this will develop into an ongoing
campaign in the Australian media, including in ‘The Age’: a campaign which will
not relent until there are comprehensive and fully-funded government programs
to ‘Close the Gap’ on life expectancy for the mentally ill, much as there are
programs to ‘Close the Gap’ for Indigenous Australia.

Responding to Morrison:Austerity not the Answer!

Apparently
Scott Morrison is under pressure to cut spending in the upcoming Federal Budget
rather than raise taxes. (Herald-Sun, 17/4, ‘p 11)What some people don’t understand, though, it
that there is no ‘magic pudding’, and that cuts to health, education,
infrastructure and welfare will have enormous ramifications.Without increasing progressive taxation –
which takes more from the rich than the poor – then there are two possible
consequences.Either the quality of
services and infrastructure: like broadband, roads, health, education, aged
care– will suffer.Or there will be privatisation and/or user
pays.There will be more $100,000
degrees. State schools will suffer – as
will our skilled workforce and economy. And Australia will continue to lag behind in
the quality of its broadband. The
problem with this is that ‘collective consumption’ through taxes can actually
give voters a ‘better deal’ in their capacity as tax payers than as isolated
privateconsumers. Medicare demonstrates
this.But the Liberals have an
Ideological fixation on ‘ever smaller government’ which defies practicality and
common sense.Supposed Christians like
Abbott and Bernadi also ignore an older tradition of Christian Democracy which
had no issue with a mixed economy and a ‘fair welfare state’.

We need a strong response on Aged
Care ; This needs to be made a top issue in the impending Federal Election
Sarah Russell (The Age, ‘We’re ignoring the needs of our ageing population’, 17/4)
draws attention to the under-funding of Aged Care : quality of training, staff
pay,conditions, morale, and numbers of
staff on premises.The result is poor
service regarding turning in beds, assistance with eating, dressing and
showering.But the problems with Aged
Care and Rights go deeper.Those in
residential care often simply don’t have
anything to do but stare at TV and walls all day.Similarly those ‘ageing in place’ (at home)
can be lonely, socially isolated, and bereft of meaning in life. Hence appallingly
high
levels of suicide amongst the aged. (especially men)A common response is for policy makers to
throw their hands in the air at ‘the ageing of our population’.But the current Aged Care budget is $17
billion out of a
$1.6 Billion economy – or approximately one per cent.An indexed annual $5 billion/year boost could
make a big difference: providing programs for social engagement, purpose,
entertainment and mental stimulation, moving away from ‘user pays’, increasing
pensions, and providing skilled staff numbers which are desperately needed. – We
need an ongoing campaign to make this a top priority in the upcoming Federal election.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Shutting down debate can create a cultural pressure cooker,
something which critics of Australian universities dismiss with their glib
references to ‘left wing political correctness’, writes Dr Tristan Ewins.

It has become commonplace for conservative commentators to make
the accusation that our universities are enthralled to ‘left wing political
correctness’ and ‘Marxism’. But the narrative of political correctness
itself can be deployed to shut down debate; such as in right-wing circles where
there was once the common dismissal of the Left as promoting a mentality of
‘save the gay whales’. In other words, there existed an insensitive mentality
which dismissed the rights and experiences of those of non-heterosexual
orientation as nothing but political correctness.

On the Right particularly, there has also developed a narrative
around so-called Left elites who enforce political correctness, and who are out
of touch with mainstream Australia. Some Left narratives are far from the
thinking of mainstream Australia on some issues, although one must not
forget that at times in this country’s history, racism, sexism, and contempt
towards other minorities was considered mainstream. The shift in this country’s
view of minorities and women has occurred only as a consequence of the
leadership provided by the Left and Centre-Left.

Specifically, the off-hand dismissal of narratives around the
‘invasion’ of this country can also be seen as reinforcing insensitivity
towards indigenous people, and consolidating the kinds of perspectives that
reinforced the narrative of terra
nullius: the narrative that the continent we live on was
unoccupied (or more specifically ‘there was no sovereign state’ before
colonisation), legitimising settlement.

On the other hand, the injustices experienced by Indigenous
Australia need to be resolved through a process of recognition, reconciliation
and compensation. There has to be a point at which the nation moves on
together. But this is not really possible, though, without a Treaty process.

“There is
demand for critical thinkers.”

Red-baiting and promoting misunderstanding and confusion around
Marxism is another common tactic deployed by conservative forces. It is true
that an array of repressive regimes identified as Marxist throughout the 20th century.
But it is also true that prior to the rise of Leninism and Stalinism, Marxists
were the strongest advocates of free, universal and equal suffrage. (Throughout
the 19th and early 20th centuries, much of Europe used a
weighted suffrage system which granted voting power overwhelmingly on the basis
of wealth, entrenching the control of the nobility and bourgeoisie despite an
exploding working class vote for the social democratic parties.) Some of the
strongest critics of Stalinism and Leninism were other (democratic) Marxists.

Many democratic Marxist narratives retain force, and do not rest
on any totalitarian world-view. At the core of Marxism is the desire for a
society based on the distributive principle “from each according to ability, to
each according to need”, as well as the aim of empowering every individual to
reach their full potential through immersion in the breadth and depth of human
culture: from music, literature and art, to sport, philosophy, economics etc.
This is a side of Marxism rarely acknowledged by its critics.

Finally, criticisms around employability miss the mark. The
humanities and social sciences have long been condemned by those who opposed a
critical society: a society which subjects itself to criticism, and does not
take Ideological assumptions for granted. For some people, however, there is a
technocratic outlook for which nothing matters except the technical demands of
the labour market, and the imperative of maximising GDP. That said, there is
demand for critical thinkers who can conduct research and criticism, and can
express themselves fluently. Sometimes narratives around employability are more
about shutting down criticism and pluralism in our democracy.

“It’s time we
rejected right-wing narratives.”

To conclude, it is only fair to concede that sometimes parts of
the Left do not tolerate internal dissent around their orthodoxies. And the
relationship between parts of the Left and the principle of free-speech has
become inconsistent and unclear. Pluralism generally means you engage with your
political and intellectual rivals rather than just shutting them down. Shutting
down debate can create a cultural pressure cooker, which over the long term
builds up resentment.Though
for instance when faced with a real and present danger of fascism that may
warrant a rethink.

Also modern identity politics often revolves around a series of
identities – around gender, sexuality, race etc – which are sometimes promoted
in a kind of arbitrary hierarchy rather than through an integrated analysis. At
the same time, also, parts (not all) of today’s Left have largely abandoned
their traditional narratives around economic justice, economic democracy and
equality, effectively distancing themselves from the working class and the
working poor.

The problem is not so much with the critique of
socially-constructed identity so much as it is with the method of an arbitrary
hierarchy, and the abandonment of older Left narratives on the struggle for
equality, and on the failings of capitalism. Here, though, the
commonly-deployed term cultural Marxism is absurd for anyone who has an
understanding. It was economics which was at the core of the old Marxist
orthodoxy.

It’s time we rejected right-wing narratives around so-called
political correctness. Ironically these very narratives shut down debate. They
promote exactly the same kind of distortion and intolerance that so-called Left
elites are accused of engaging in by the conservative Right.

THE RED FLAG IS STILL FLYING HERE

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About Me

Tristan's areas of expertise include Australian and world politics, social theory, education, history, and computer gaming for PC. He considers himself a liberal, and also a socialist, but has also referred to himself as a left social democrat. He says such - conscious that there was once a time when 'social democracy' and 'socialism' were synonymous. Furthermore, Tristan is a long-time member of the Australian Labor Party - specifically its Socialist Left wing. He is also involved in the Australian Fabian Society. Tristan has written for many publications - including a stint freelancing for 'The Canberra Times': the daily broadsheet of the Australian Capital. Tristan's Personal Homepage is here: http://sites.google.com/site/tristanewinsfreelancewriter